


where there's tea (there's hope)

by interestinggin



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, World War I, i guess?, in that one of them is a ghost?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interestinggin/pseuds/interestinggin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a werewolf, a vampire, a ghost, and a blue tin kettle - and all the things that make a house a home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where there's tea (there's hope)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neftzer_nettlestonenell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/gifts).



> a tiny little ficlet, inspired by the [thirty prompts meme](http://interestinggin.tumblr.com/post/140331578359/conversations-with-the-crows-katehalharry) on tumblr.

after the bite, most of what mitchell remembers is in smells, or tastes, or some combination of all of them with the careful _thudthud thudthud_ of a heartbeat ever present under every conversation with the living. before the bite, though, he remembers splashes of colour in a world stained black and brown with mud and shellfire; a pot of red geraniums on the sill of a gîte; the flash of gold under a shirt speaking of a faith held close to the heart; the whistling of a blue tin kettle.

he doesn’t speak french; he’s never thought he’d need to. god, he barely speaks english, most days. but he learns enough to get by, like all the men of the thirty-sixth; enough to say “we’re english” (because that’s a subtlety he’s got no time for in war, and if he’s truly, totally honest, he never cared that much for patriotism anyway) and to ask if the bar’s still standing.

tea is a constant. a reviver. the great healer of humanity. mitchell learns the power of a good cuppa after the first time he sees a man’s legs blown off and his captain insisted on a brew-up as soon as they were out of the war zone. somehow, with their hands wrapped round their mugs and the smell of the hot, strong drink rising up, it starts to seem like it’s maybe only the _fifth_ worst day that week.

 

the day they move in, annie carries the box on her lap in the van, clutching it like a lifeline as owen swears at the traffic around temple way; all the essentials, as her mum put it, wrapping up a pair of mugs in the previous day’s _bristol post_ and stuffing some teabags in a little bundle of clingfilm. she brings it into the kitchen - _her_ kitchen! _their_ kitchen! before the other boxes have even been moved onto the pavement. she takes tremendous pleasure in deciding where to plug in the kettle, opening the box and removing it with all the reverence of a relic.

years ago, when she was a teenager, she spent sundays round her gran’s, legs tucked up underneath her on the kitchen sideboard waiting for the kettle to boil. gran refused to buy electric, said that tin did the job for her in trinidad and it could do the job just as well here; annie remembers the day she got impatient waiting for the whistling and turned the hob up too high, and the blackened underside, and the hiding her gran gave her when she found out (with a wooden spoon, somewhat undermined by the fact that they were both laughing so hard).

it seems right, really, she thinks, looking at this one, shiny and new and straight out of the packaging. electric, true, but just old-fashioned enough to be vintage. a little bit of home to start this place off right. she hears owen wrestling with the door, and runs to help him with the boxes, sheer delight on her face. the house feels like it’s opening up, like it’s coming to life. like it’s been waiting for her, and now she’s here, and life can get started at last.

something old, something new, something borrowed -

 

julia was more of a coffee person, really. which is fine, george explains, patiently, to mitchell’s unconscious form as he waits for the man who can’t drink blood but can put sambuca away perfectly well to get off the bloody floor and go to bed. it’s not as though that was, you know, a dealbreaker. he still loved her. and coffee’s necessary, when it’s the _morning_ , when you need, you know, a kick in the teeth, it’s just that coffee empirically - empirically, mitchell, it’s a philosophical term, keep up - empirically tastes _dreadful_. it tastes dreadful in the cup and it tastes worse in people’s mouths, you know, when you’re snogging them. it’s like cigarettes. it’s horrible.

mitchell stirs a little at the mention of the word ‘cigarettes’, makes a small bleating sound, grabs a cushion from the floor and covers his head with it. george, still holding the sambuca bottle and feeling far too sober for someone talking this much nonsense, silently wishes him a slow and painful death. the dawn is creeping into the living room through the yellowed curtains, and george pulls himself to his feet, plods wearily and a little unsteadily into the kitchen, fills the kettle and turns it on by autopilot. he finds himself standing, staring at it, willing it to boil by the power of telekinesis, or magic, or love or something.

they’ve been living together for two weeks, and he is just getting used to this - to two of everything again, two people’s lives crowding back in to one room. he pulls down two mugs, and two teabags. mitchell likes his tea strong, boiled up in a sock and tasting faintly of mud, but he’ll settle for pg tips in this century. george favours twinings’ everyday, because george - even drunk, half-a-bottle-of-paintstripper worse for wear, dirt poor and apparently-now-a-werewolf george - has _standards_.

julia, he realises, as he pours water into the mugs, no longer hurts so much. she’s not a sharp pain anymore, more of an ache. like novacaine’s been pumped into the wound, like he’s left the dentist with a foggy head and a sense of warmth. he smiles through the rituals of the milk and the squeezing of the bags, and carries both mugs through to try and stir his housemate.

the little blue kettle steams contentedly in the kitchen that is now theirs. nobody sees it part in strange ways around a spot on the sideboard, like it’s framing something unreal. nobody sees a hand that isn’t solid pick up a cup that doesn’t exist, hears a voice hum a calypso tune in a key it was never supposed to be in. 

nobody sees the woman who isn’t there grinning as george kicks mitchell in the side and mitchell hits him with a cushion. there is a warmth here, in the house that killed her. there is something more than real, something that makes this house a home. there’s life, of a sort. more than life . there’s a cup of tea and a steaming kettle, and someday, that’ll be more than enough.


End file.
